Bicycle Built for Two (43 page)

Kate bit her lower lip. It was about Ma. It
had to be about Ma.

Alex cleared his throat. “Um, it’s about
your mother.”

Kate pressed a fist to her mouth.

“Ma?” Billy sounded like a little boy.

Walter said nothing.

“It’s from my mother. It says, ‘Mrs. Finney
has taken a turn for the worse. Dr. Conners recommends her family
come at once.’” Alex looked up from the telegram, straight at Kate,
as if he knew what she wanted to know. “My mother sent one of the
farm boys to Centreville on our fastest horse, where the telegram
was dispatched. The message is no more than an hour old, Kate.”

“I’ll have to make arrangements at work.”
Walter turned to his younger brother. “You go with Katie, Bill.
I’ll clear your absence with Mr. Schneider.”

Kate heard Billy answer Walter, and she
turned to say she’d go with Bill to the English farm. A strange,
muted roaring in her ears interfered with the thought, and she
didn’t get her statement out. The last thing she heard was Alex’s
sharp, “Kate!” Then she heard no more.

She awoke in Alex’s arms. He held her
cradled gently, and he sat in one of the chairs in his room. Billy
hovered over her. When she rubbed her eyes and glanced around the
room, she didn’t see Walter.

“She’s awake!” Bill sounded unutterably
relieved, which seemed rather an over-reaction to Kate, mainly
because she had no idea why he was reacting at all.

“Kate.” Alex’s gentle murmur seemed to draw
Kate closer to him.

“What . . .” What what? Oh, yes, she
remembered. “What happened?”

“You fainted,” Alex crooned. “My dear,
darling Kate. You actually fainted.”

“I never faint,” Kate declared stoutly. She
struggled to release herself from Alex’s arms, although she didn’t
really want to.

“Nuts,” crooned her beloved. “You’ve fainted
twice in the short time I’ve known you.”

“I have?” Bother. There went that illusion
of strength and determination. Then she remembered the telegram and
her heart gave a huge, lurching spasm. She sat up in spite of
Alex’s attempts at restraint. “What about Ma?”

“Walter’s gone to send a telegram back to
Mr. English’s farm, Kate,” Billy said. He was such a nice boy. Kate
really loved her little brother. And her big brother. “Ma’s taken a
bad turn. Mr. English is driving us all out there tomorrow. He’s
sending a telegram to the preacher from his church, too. You two
can be married in front of Ma, Katie, as soon as it can be
arranged. That will make her happy.”

“Married?” What was all this talk about
marriage? She couldn’t marry Alex. She’d ruin his life, for
heaven’s sake.

“Married,” Alex said firmly, as if he
intended to consider no more arguments from her.

“But we can’t get married, Alex.” She felt
feeble, as if all the strength in her body had fled sometime
between this morning and right now. “I can’t allow you to make that
sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?” Bill looked honestly
bemused.

Alex gave him a wry glance. “She thinks
she’ll be ruining my life if she marries me, because I have more
money than she does.”

“That’s not the reason, and you know it, darn
it!”

Bill eyed his sister with disfavor. “Shoot,
Katie, that’s the stupidest reason I’ve ever heard. If any two
people were made for each other, it’s you and Alex.”

Kate’s mouth fell open.

Alex grinned at Kate’s brother. “Exactly. My
thinking to the last degree. I knew you were a smart man from the
moment we met, Bill Finney.”

“Likewise,” said Kate’s brother, who looked
to Kate like Mr. Carroll’s Cheshire Cat in full meow.

“Besides,” Alex said in that reasonable tone
Kate hated, “it will make your mother happy to see you and me
attached permanently. She can go to her grave with the full
knowledge that her children will be cared for.”

It was absolutely the only argument Kate
would have accepted. And Alex knew it, the rat. She heaved a
gigantic sigh. “Oh, nuts.”

“Exactly,” said Alex.

Bill got up and sauntered to the door. “Now
that that’s taken care of, I’ll go downstairs and collect Wally.
We’ve got some packing to do.”

“I’ll pick you both us tomorrow morning. Or
this morning.” Alex yawned. “You know what I mean.”

“I know,” said Bill. Before he shut the door
behind himself, he winked at them both.

As soon as they were alone, Alex began
nuzzling her neck. “We’ll make the happiest couple in the United
States, Kate. You’ll see.”

“I’ll make you miserable,” she grumbled,
although it was difficult not to purr with his warm breath melting
her bones.

He chuckled. Kate thought that, in a
well-run world, Alex’s deep, velvety chuckle would be outlawed. As
she had reason to know, though, the world wasn’t well-run, and
there was no escape for her via that road.

That being the case, she decided it would be
foolish to fight. Turning into his embrace, she flung her arms
around him and completed her abject surrender. “I love you,
Alex.”

“I love you, too, Kate.”

The words were so sweet to her ears that she
almost fainted for the third time in her life.

They made sweet love that night, in Alex’s
hotel room, leaving his innocent sister to fend for herself. Alex
told Kate that Mary Jo wouldn’t dare say a word, and Kate believed
him. Why shouldn’t she? He’d been right about everything so
far.

“I love you, Kate,” he whispered as he
entered her.

She lifted her hips to welcome him home and
clung to his shoulders as if to a lifeline—which is pretty much
what she considered him. “I love you, too, Alex.”

He drove her past the point of desperate
hunger, up a ladder of craving, until it seemed to her as if her
entire being exploded in a shower of brilliance. The experience was
so exquisite that tears leaked from Kate’s eyes when Alex, too,
achieved release and collapsed at her side. She held on to him
almost desperately as an odd sense of understanding seeped through
her.

“You know,” she mused after they’d both
caught their breath, “I’m beginning to understand how a woman could
cleave to a man even after he’d ceased to behave as a human
being.”

Alex grunted and turned over so that his
body cocooned hers. “You’re thinking about your mother and
father?”

“Yes. I always wondered how she could have
loved him, because to me he was always a monster.”

“Mmmm. But you’re thinking he must have been
a different man when they met?”

She nodded. “If Ma had ever loved him the
way I love you, well . . .” Her words faded out. Even with this new
understanding on her part firing her imagination, she couldn’t
conceive of Alex turning into a drunken monster like Herbert
Finney.

Alex squeezed her to him, and she felt his
sex begin to stir to life again. Good. To Kate, the life-affirming
act of sexual union was a blessing, and she hoped to do it as often
as Alex was able.

“I swear to you, Kate,” he said solemnly,
“that I’ll never, ever behave in a manner that will make you
ashamed. Or in a way that will make you hate me. I couldn’t stand
that.”

She turned in his arms and pressed her
breasts against his chest. “I couldn’t, either.”

Chapter Twenty

Alex took quite a bit of ribbing from
Gilbert MacIntosh, his best friend, when he asked Gil to serve as
his best man in an emergency wedding ceremony to be held at Alex’s
farm is five days’ time. He didn’t mind. He was besotted and didn’t
care who knew it.

Kate, who didn’t invite many people to the
wedding, was able to persuade Belle Monroe, the woman who’d rescued
her from her father’s attempted strangulation, to visit the farm
and serve as her maid of honor. Since Belle worked for a couple
called the Richmonds, they came, too. Fortunately for everyone, the
Richmonds came complete with a little boy and a little girl, one of
whom served as a ring-bearer, and the other as a flower girl.

Win Asher, the official photographer for the
World’s Columbian Exposition and a friend of Belle’s, agreed to
take pictures of the ceremony. Kate got the feeling Mr. Asher came
more for Belle’s sake than hers, but she didn’t care.

Mrs. Finney’s health was so poor that she
had to recline during the ceremony, but Kate saw to it that she
wore a beautiful new gown, and Alex saw to it that she was propped
up on a chaise and had a clear view of everything.

Kate’s brothers looked uncomfortable in
their new suits, bought at Wanamaker’s ready-made men’s wear
department, but Kate thought they were stunning. She came from a
handsome family, in spite of her father’s deplorable set of
weaknesses.

She wished she could stop resenting her
father. She knew her resentment was childish and did her no credit,
especially now that he was dead and couldn’t cause any more trouble
for anyone. But she couldn’t help it. He’d been awful, and even
though she almost understood that he might not have been awful
always, she couldn’t help but be glad he was dead and unable to
interfere with her family any longer.

Mrs. English was about the dearest woman
Kate had ever met, barring her own mother, and Mary Jo was so
excited about having the wedding in her own house that she nearly
drove everyone to distraction. Kate was becoming accustomed to Mary
Jo’s adolescent transports. She no longer felt like slapping the
child every time she behaved like a silly young girl, mainly
because she was a silly young girl.

Mary Jo, unlike Kate herself, hadn’t been
forced to accept responsibilities greater than her years warranted
long before she was ready to do so. Kate honored the strong family
bonds that had allowed such a state of affairs to exist. She aimed
to create one along with Alex, as a matter of fact.

Madame Esmeralda came to the wedding. She
arrayed herself in all of her Rumanian Gypsy finery, and finally
got around to telling Mary Jo her fortune at the reception. Three
of the Egyptian musicians and Miss Fahreda Mahzar attended, too.
Along with Madame, the Middle Eastern contingent were the hit of
the show, according to Alex, who claimed he’d not anticipated his
wedding to be such an extravaganza.

Kate smacked him on the arm and told him not
to be sarcastic.

Peering down at her with such a loving look
it almost made Kate dizzy, he said, “Believe me, my darling Kate,
before I met you, I hadn’t anticipated anything but boredom and
decay from marriage.”

Her eyes popped open wide. “Boredom? Decay?
What the heck did you think marriage was, anyhow?”

Alex thought about it, then shrugged. “A
bore. The beginning of a decline into old age and decrepitude.”

Kate stared. “Good Lord.”

He grinned. “See how much you’ve taught me?
Not only am I being spared becoming a stuffy old man, but I’m even
welcoming Gypsies and Egyptians into my home.”

“Not to mention three Irish kids from the
Chicago slums.”

“Ah, Kate.” He grabbed her up and swung her
around. “I’m hoping we can do something about that. I’ve talked to
my attorney about creating a lung center at Saint Mildred’s in your
mother’s name.”

Kate buried her face in his shoulder and
offered up a prayer of thanks for sending Alex English into
Madame’s booth that day in May.

# # #

Hazel Finney died two weeks to the day after
her daughter was united in holy matrimony with Alex Finney. She
faded away one night as Kate sat beside her bed, embroidering
pillow slips by the candlelight.

Her last days on earth had been happy, and
Kate blessed her new husband for that, even though she knew she’d
always miss her mother. Fortunately, Mrs. English, who was
brokenhearted at her new friend’s demise, was there for her and
made a good substitute.

Alex had spent the two weeks following his
wedding making plans. A month after Kate and he said “I do,” he
swept his bride off on a world tour. Kate was especially fond of
the pyramids, about which she’d been told by her musician friends,
although her advanced state of pregnancy made descending into one
problematic. Alex told her not to fret.

“We’ll have decades and decades together,
Kate. I’ll take you to Egypt again when the kids go off to
college.”

Kate thought that was a spectacular plan.